Blizzard recently launched the “Season of Hell’s Legacy” event for Diablo 4 to celebrate the Diablo 30th anniversary, but it’s left Path of Exile co-creator Chris Wilson feeling quite uncomfortable. In a video, he called the event “really off-putting,” arguing that games should respect their core storylines and take their major antagonists seriously—especially those who’ve been with the series for years. The fact that Blizzard even referred to Diablo as the “birthday boy” on stage made Wilson feel it was a bit too casual.
All Three Prime Evils Suddenly Appear—Story Progression Skipped?
Wilson’s biggest question is this: Diablo 4 had been slowly building toward the confrontation with the Prime Evils—the three main demons—yet during the 30th anniversary event, all three Prime Evils appeared at once, and the event itself wasn’t even tightly connected to Diablo 4’s main story. In his view, this undermines the narrative weight that’s been carefully built up over time, and players might start feeling these major events aren’t as significant as they should be.
Even Dead Deckard Cain Is Back
What Wilson finds even more ridiculous is that the event brought back Deckard Cain. The problem is, this classic character died in Diablo 3‘s story, yet now he’s returned in spirit form. Wilson believes this approach could diminish the weight of “cause and effect” and character deaths in players’ minds—if characters can just come back whenever they want, how much weight do major story events really hold anymore?
Diablo 5 Gives Him Hope Instead
Interestingly, while Wilson has plenty of issues with Diablo 4’s 30th anniversary event, he isn’t pessimistic about Diablo 5. Instead, he’s “cautiously optimistic” about the direction the new game has shown so far, including random world design closer to the early games, a more desolate atmosphere, and some design elements returning to the Diablo 1 style. As for whether Diablo 5 will really recapture that early-series magic, we’ll have to wait for Blizzard to reveal more.